Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The recent survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the sex and drug habits of Americans is the latest piece of evidence to shine a spotlight on the inaccuracies of the race-tainted war on drugs. The survey found that whites are much more likely to use drugs than blacks. Other studies have found roughly equal rates of drug usage by blacks and whites.

What makes this survey more eye-catching is that it didn’t solely measure generic drug use, but singled out the use of cocaine or street drugs. The finding flies in the face of conventional drug war wisdom — that blacks use and deal street drugs, while whites use trendy, recreational, designer drugs, which presumably includes powder cocaine.

The CDC report’s findings again call into question the gaping disparity in drug sentencing between whites and blacks. More than 70 percent of those prosecuted in federal courts for drug possession and sale, mostly of small amounts of crack cocaine, and given stiff mandatory sentences are blacks. Federal prosecutors and lawmakers justify the disparity with the retort that crack cocaine is dangerous and threatening, and leads to waves of gang shootouts, turf battles and thousands of terrorized residents in poor black communities.

In some instances, that’s true, and police and prosecutors are right to hit back hard at the violence. But the majority of those that deal and use crack cocaine aren’t violence-prone gang members — they’re poor, and increasingly female, young blacks. They clearly need help. Not jailing.

But it’s a myth that powder cocaine is benign and has no association with crime and violence. In a comprehensive survey in 2002, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the White House’s low-profile task force to combat drug use, attributed shoplifting, burglary, theft, larceny, money laundering and even the transport of undocumented workers in some cities to powdered cocaine use. It also found that powder cocaine users were more likely to commit domestic violence attacks.

There was more. The report also fingered powder cocaine users as prime dealers of other drugs, including heroin, crystal meth and crack cocaine. Even more revealing, these powder cocaine users sold crack and heroin in inner-city neighborhoods.

Yet the top-heavy drug use by young whites and the crime and violence that go with it stir no public outcry for mass arrests, prosecutions and tough prison sentences for white drug dealers, many of whom deal drugs that are directly linked to serious crime and violence.

Those whites unlucky enough to get popped for drug use or sale are treated with compassion, hand-wringing sympathy, prayer sessions, expensive psychiatric counseling, treatment and rehab programs, private treatment centers and drug diversion programs.

And they should be. But so should those blacks and others victimized by discriminatory drug laws.

Voters and legislators in California, New York, Michigan and other states now recognize that bankrupting state budgets to lock up nonviolent drug offenders and throw away the key won’t win the war on drugs. They have opted for drug diversion, treatment and counseling programs rather than jail as a far more useful, humane and cost-effective way to deal with drug users.

This has brought some measure of sanity back to drug enforcement policy. But that doesn’t sit well with the drug warriors. They have resisted and will continue to resist any and every effort to get Congress to modify or scrap the blatant and deliberate racial disparity in the drug sentencing laws.

In an odd way, they have to take their hard stand. The public scapegoating of blacks for America’s drug problem during the past two decades has been relentless. A frank admission that the laws are biased and unfair and have not done much to combat the drug plague would be an admission of failure.

It could ignite a real, sustained and deep soul search over whether the billions of dollars that have been squandered in the failed and flawed drug war, the lives ruined by it and the families torn up by the rigid and unequal enforcement of the laws have really accomplished anything. It then might call into question why people use and abuse drugs in the first place and, if they do, if it is really the government’s business to turn the legal screws on some drug users while turning a blind eye to others.

The greatest fallout from the failed drug policy is that it further embeds the widespread notion that the drug problem is exclusively a black problem. This makes it easy for opportunistic politicians to grab votes, garner press attention and bloat state prison budgets to jail more black offenders, while continuing to feed the illusion that the drug war is being won.

The CDC survey is smoking-gun proof of one thing: As long as state and federal officials ruthlessly hunt for drug culprits in poor black communities and not the suburbs, the grand illusion will continue to wreck lives — mostly black lives.

BlackNews.com columnist Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author, political analyst and social issues commentator.